Cincinnati asks state to overturn law preventing cities from regulating oil and gas drilling

Cincinnati City Council continued its effort to prevent a
controversial method of drilling for oil and gas by passing a resolution
on Wednesday asking the state to allow the city to make its own
regulatory laws.
The resolution expresses council’s dissatisfaction with
the Ohio Legislature for granting “special privileges to the oil and
natural gas industry” and asks it to repeal any laws that pre-empt local
control over drilling.
The resolution targets the controversial practice of
hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” which uses chemically-laced water to
free up natural gas trapped in shale formations underneath Ohio.
Fracking opponents worry that the chemicals used in the
fluid — which companies aren’t required to disclose — can be toxic to
people and animals.
Prior to the council vote, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls and
Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan held a news conference on the steps of City
Hall.
“I believe local officials should have a say on all
matters related to potentially hazardous activities such as fracking,”
Quinlivan said in an emailed statement. “I urge my colleagues to send a strong message to the Ohio
Governor, the Ohio Legislature, and Cincinnati residents by passing
this resolution.”
A 2004 state law puts regulation of oil and gas drilling
under the state’s purview, preventing municipalities from regulating
drilling on their land.
Copies of the resolution will be sent to Gov. John Kasich
and members of the Ohio General Assembly elected from the Cincinnati
area. The resolution comes after Ohio recently lifted a
moratorium on new injection wells, which shoot wastewater deep
underground for storage.
There had been a temporary ban on new wells almost a year
ago after seismologists said an injection was to blame for 11
earthquakes around the Youngstown area.
City council in August passed an ordinance to band
injection wells within city limits. Because the injection well ban
doesn’t mention drilling, council hoped it wouldn’t clash with the state
law preventing local regulation of oil and gas drilling.

Mayor Mallory to join Qualls in official campaign kickoff

Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls will be formally announcing her run for the top spot in Cincinnati on Thursday.
Qualls’ campaign site has been up for some time already,
and the vice mayor’s team had a meeting with political writers and
bloggers on Nov. 26.
The vice mayor will be joined by current term-limited Mayor Mark Mallory, implying his support for her mayoral run. The event is taking place at 10 a.m. at Core Clay, Inc., a small women-owned business in Walnut Hills.
Qualls, who is endorsed by both the Democratic Party and
Charter Committee, previously served as mayor from 1993-1999 after
serving in Cincinnati City Council from 1991-1993. She returned to
council in 2007.
Former city councilman John Cranley, also a Democrat, is
also running for mayor. Cranley served on council between 2001 and 2007.
His campaign will officially launch in January and former mayor Charlie
Luken will serve as the honorary chair.
Republican Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners
President Greg Hartmann is also considering a run for mayor, but hasn’t
made a formal announcement.
Cincinnati has an open mayoral primary, which means that
the top two vote-getters will run against each other in the general
election, regardless of party affiliation.

When we enter the grown-up world, there are quite a few
aspects of life that lose a great bit of childlike mystique: visits to
the dentist, overalls, Hostess products and, perhaps most glaringly, the
holiday season.

Mia Gentile's voiceover demo gets love from company, Huffpo

If you grew up in the Midwest you’ve probably heard the
catchy jingle for “Stanley Steemer, the Carpet Cleaner.” But I bet
you’ve never heard it sung operatically, or with some bebop or thrash.
Now you can do that — all in one three-minute video featuring University
of Cincinnati musical theater grad Mia Gentile, a 2011 grad of the
College-Conservatory of Music. Local audiences know her for several
amusing turns in incarnations of The Marvelous Wonderettes at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati and the sold-out (and revived) production of next to normal, but trust me, this girl is bound for glory.
People who’ve never heard of her or the carpet cleaning company are tuning in now by the thousands, thanks to a YouTube video,
cleverly titled “The Stanley Steemer Variations (by Mia).” Gentile
generated with local musician and producer Roger Klug. Julie Spangler, a
professional pianist and musical theater instructor at CCM, introduced
Klug and Gentile, who wanted to produce a voiceover demo of the various
musical styles she could reproduce (which appears to be limitless). Klug
convinced her to translate her vocal performances into a video, which
they shot in one day over the summer. “It was a total collaboration,”
Klug tells me. “We talked about what each character would look like, she
did the makeup and hair, I shot and edited the thing. We completely did
it for no other reason than ‘just for the fun of it.’” It was shot at
the local studio Mental Giant with Klug using a Sony Handycam.
Well, that it was — it’s apparent from watching. But
everyone is getting in on the fun, and the video has taken off virally
on YouTube. When Klug contacted me on Monday morning, it had had 40,000
hits in just a few days. By midnight the piece had exploded, exceeding
100,000 hits. He and Gentile have created a blog site to support it: http://miavideo.wordpress.com.
Even better, the Stanley Steemer people have picked it up,
hyping it on their Facebook page, which has led to a suspicion that the
whole thing is a clever marketing ploy. “Another faction thinks Stanley
Steemer owes us a big check,” Klug jokes, “which I'm inclined to agree
with!” It’s spread to an international audience now, dare I say “picking
up steam” with a mention and a link in the U.K. edition of The Huffington Post. Before this winds up, Gentile will need her own 1-800 number!

DJ-turned-designer puts Ohio on the map

It’s a timeworn story: creative type grows up in a small
town and feels compelled to leave for the big city. But instead of the usual ending
for local designer/businessman Floyd Johnson has instead created his own avenues
for creative success right in his hometown.

We didn’t mean to help re-elect a socialist

During the past year CityBeat has spent a lot of
energy reporting on countless Republican screw-ups, from typical
shortsighted policies to legislation that is straight-up offensive to women,
minorities, gay people and the poor and working class. But we didn’t
realize that by pointing out how offensive and irrelevant the country’s
GOP leaders were acting, that we were inadvertently killing America.
That's why we would like to formally apologize to the Lebanon tea party in Warren County. The email you sent to The Enquirer today hit us
pretty hard — the fact that you’re literally wearing black and mourning
America because “socialists, welfare and unions took over this country”
is super sad. In our haste to ask questions of elected leaders, fact
check their statements and put their beliefs and policies into perspective over the
past few months, we forgot how badly people in Warren County wish America
could be like the 1950s again, when women knew their place and black
people had to operate the elevators and never say anything whites didn’t
want to hear. Mad Men is a great show.
We didn’t mean to be tricked by President Obama’s stimulus
bill — we (stupidly) believed the economists who said it staved off a
depression caused by under-regulation of the housing and financial
industries (we tried to believe Mitt Romney’s concept of further
reducing regulations so the job-creators can stimulate the economy in
the private sector thus giving our wealth back to us, but it was maybe
too complicated for us to understand?).
Some people we know kept their jobs when the president
didn’t allow the American car companies to go broke even though they’re
the ones that decided to max out profits on SUVs with truck beds on the
back. Other people we know spent time last year without health care, and
this country’s health care costs are somewhere around twice as much as
any other country’s so we were like, “Yea, reforming that system sounds
about right.” But we admit that we don’t know what it’s going to be like
for the 15 percent of this country living in poverty to all of the
sudden have access to preventative care. Someone in Cincinnati died of a
tooth problem last year, and we don’t even know if that’s covered.
We realize that it wasn’t Mitt Romney who used the term
“legitimate rape,” but it made us want to throw up, which slowed down
productivity that might have allowed us to figure out that Don’t Ask
Don’t Tell was the only thing keeping our country’s military from
turning Afghanistan into a European-style gay disco.
We thought it was kind of gross when the president killed
Osama bin Laden, but everyone was really happy about it so we focused
our attention on the results of the president’s home buying and
refinancing programs that helped stimulate the economy and saved
people’s houses, even though we’re all a bunch of renters who don’t even
know how to use a level.
So we’re clearly at fault for your expectation of the
downfall of this country, and we realize that you’re upset and probably
right about America becoming a socialist nation within months. We messed
up bad this time, but we want you to know that we’re not blind to it —
your press release has put our actions into a perspective that we wish
we had yesterday or, even better, several years ago before we learned
how to do our jobs the right way.
At least you have the local daily newspaper to publish
your emotional reactions to historical election results and to continue
endorsing GOP candidates no matter how ill qualified and misguided they are.
Please don’t mourn long — there’s still hope for the type of social
regression you’re looking for, especially in Warren County.

Bill Cunningham to seek advice on retirement because of Obama re-election

Voice of the common man, conscience of the American
people, shepherd of men and 700WLW staple Bill Cunningham made an
impassioned plea to his radio audience Nov. 2, saying if Mitt Romney
lost the election, he would end his 30-plus year career in radio.
“For nearly 30 years I’ve been the voice of the common man
and conscience of the American people. I have led you and you’ve
allowed me to lead you through thick and thin, through good times and
bad, through recessions, depressions, wars, feasts and famines, through
hurricanes, tornadoes and more,” Cunningham said.
“If Mitt Romney does not win the election, I, Bill
Cunningham, your shepherd, will quit radio on Wednesday Nov. 7. I’ll
give it up. Continue my great television career and practicing law, but
if my credibility means anything between you and me it means that you
will listen to what I have to say.”
Now, in the morning after, a time when we ourselves have often
felt that “oh God, what have I done” feeling, we at CityBeat want to
make our own impassioned plea: Don’t quit, Willie. Cincinnati needs you.
You’ve always been a source of inspiration and wisdom to
budding journalists and truth-seekers at CityBeat. Were it not for your
Aug. 28, 2009 interview with Cincinnati Profile, we would never have
known what “my baby daddy” was. We might forget what Barack Hussein
Obama’s full name is were it not for your show.
Without your faithful shepherding we’d go on believing the
lie that things like assistance to the disabled and payments to workers
who are injured on the job were good things!
We’re glad to hear that you are backtracking on your Nov. 2 pledge planning to go on an intervention with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Gov.
John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman to determine your future in radio.
As you said on your show today, “every herd of sheep needs
a shepherd,” and you’ve been our shepherd for more than 30 years.
Please don’t “take [your] staff, crash in [your] skull and kill
[yourself].” We, the bleating masses of Cincinnati, still need you.